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Film Evokes Memories for Milk’s Relatives

Courtesy of L. Stuart MilkHarvey Milk delivering a toast at the wedding of his brother, Robert, and his sister-in-law, Audrey, at Temple B’nai Sholom in Rockville Centre, N.Y., in 1954.

Long before Harvey Milk became one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States, before he established himself as a civil rights leader in San Francisco, and before he was assassinated in 1978, he was a bright, sometimes mischievous, kid growing up in a large Jewish immigrant family on Long Island.

Gus Van Sant‘s “Milk,” a nominee for the Academy Award for best picture, has evoked strong memories for Milk’s family on the East Coast. The film, starring Sean Penn, who has been nominated for best actor, focuses mostly on Milk’s life after he moved to San Francisco in the early 1970s. His family was not emphasized much in the film nor in earlier accounts, “The Mayor of Castro Street,” Randy Shilts’s 1982 biography of Milk, and Rob Epstein’s 1984 documentary “The Times of Harvey Milk.”

One of those relatives is Helen Milk Mendales, a cousin, now 87 and living in Bayside, Queens. Her father, Alexander, was an older brother of Harvey Milk’s father, William. Mrs. Mendales recalled of her cousin Harvey, who was 8 years younger, in an interview:

I knew him when he was a little boy. He grew up in Woodmere. I grew up in Lynbrook, which was about a mile away. We saw each other frequently. I saw his mother, who was very close to my mother.

He was a wild little kid — he and his older brother, Robert. One day, their mother had to go out for a little bit. Robert was probably about 6 years old and his brother was 3 years old – maybe they were younger than that. In those days there were no frozen foods. It was canned goods. Her larder was stocked with canned goods. The two of them got together. I don’t know whose idea it was, but they joined in and took all the labels off the cans. When my aunt needed a can, it was always a surprise.

Harvey Milk’s grandfather, Morris, owned a local department store (where William Milk, Harvey’s father, worked for some years), and helped lead the local synagogue. “At Passover seders, my grandfather would sit at the end of the table with his questions – he would go through the whole service — and everybody would be bored,” Mrs. Mendales, who sang as a child, recalled with a laugh. “The kids were all bored.”

Audrey Milk, who married Robert Milk in 1954 at a synagogue in Rockville Centre, N.Y., recalled:

The first time I ever met Harvey was at our wedding. He flew in from California to be our best man. He was already in the Navy, a deep-sea diver. I thought he was very stunning when I saw him. He came in his Navy uniform and seemed to be charming, very charming.

After Milk left the Navy, he taught for about a year at George W. Hewlett High School in Woodmere. Another cousin, Benjamin Milk, whose father, Albert, was William Milk’s younger brother, had also attended the school.

“Harvey came back to teach at the high school the year after I graduated,” said Benjamin Milk, a former executive director of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who is now 70 and living in Bethesda, Md. “It’s really funny because I haven’t seen Harvey’s background as a teacher mentioned anywhere, including in the movie.”

The omission surprised him, Benjamin Milk said, given that one of the film’s major themes is Proposition 6, the Briggs Initiative, which would have banned gay men and lesbians from working in California’s public schools. Harvey Milk actively campaigned against the measure, which was defeated in 1978, weeks before he was assassinated. Benjamin Milk recalled:

He was a good teacher, a popular teacher, and my recollection is he loved doing it. But another cousin, Michael, told me that Harvey had a hard time putting up with the idiosyncrasies and demands of the parents. I remember him as teaching Spanish, but other people remember him as teaching math. I remember him being called Señor Leche.

Moving on from the high school, Harvey Milk held other jobs, as an insurance salesman and financial analyst. He lived for a time in California and Texas before returning to New York, and, eventually, moving to San Francisco with a boyfriend, Scott Smith. They opened a camera shop in the Castro district, where Harvey Milk became immersed in local politics, seeking office unsuccessfully in 1973 and 1975 before winning a seat on the city’s Board of Supervisors in 1977.

Courtesy of L. Stuart MilkAudrey Milk, Harvey Milk and Robert Milk outside a Milk campaign storefront in San Francisco in 1973.

Audrey Milk, who is now 78 and living in Palm Beach County, Fla., recalled being surprised when her brother-in-law first ran.

“I didn’t realize he had any inclination for politics — but I wasn’t really shocked, because I knew that he had the brains and the incentive to do whatever he wanted to do,” she said. “We supported him 100 percent.”

During a visit to San Francisco, she encountered his mischievous side.

“We did fly out there and we met him – we were in his camera store, and we even took him out for dinner,” she said. “I remember it well, because we went to a Mexican restaurant on Ghirardelli Square. I had said, ‘I don’t like spicy’. Harvey said, ‘Order this, it’s really not spicy.’ And when I got the dish I thought I was on fire. I will always remember it.”

Mrs. Mendales, the cousin, recalled that the last time she saw Harvey Milk was at his father’s funeral in 1975.

“We went to the services, and he and Robert came from the crematorium with a flag, and came over to me,” she recalled. “He said to me, ‘You know, we were all just talking about you. We just had a big seder and I wished my cousin Helen was there to lead the singing.'”

Associated PressSupervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone at the signing of San Francisco’s gay rights ordinance in April 1977. Both were assassinated in November 1978.

William Milk’s funeral had particular significance for another member of the family: his grandson L. Stuart Milk, the son of Robert and Audrey Milk, and Harvey Milk’s nephew. A teenager at the time, Stuart Milk recalled that he was coming to terms with his own sexuality, and he sought advice from his uncle.

I never told him I was gay. I always told him I was different. I later learned that he told some of his friends, like Anne Kronenberg, and his colleagues in San Francisco, that he knew that I was gay. He never forced that on me but what he did do was tell me that my feeling different was a tremendous gift to the world even more so than if I felt like everyone else. He used this Native American term, ‘You bring medicine to the world that no one else can bring.’

Stuart Milk, now 48 and living in Wilton Manors, Fla., recalled talking to his uncle after his uncle’s companion, Jack Lira, committed suicide — an event portrayed in the film. “I remember talking to Harvey after that,” he said. “It was almost like I felt no one was reaching out to him with compassion. He lost this person he had loved and was in a relationship with.”

Stuart Milk was a 17-year-old freshman at American University in Washington, D.C., on the night he learned of his uncle’s death:

It was the loss of the one family member that I felt gave almost a compass for being in touch with myself and so forth. It was a loss of, obviously, someone I admired for their courage and their ability to be who they were and not shrink back from that, not change or mask themselves. When I think about Harvey, I think about, even as a small child, the kind of the richness and color of life that he brought to me, even as a youngster. Harvey was the person who introduced me to Broadway, and Broadway musicals.

L. Stuart Milk, Harvey Milk’s nephew.

Stuart Milk came out of the closet, telling his dormmates that he was gay, the week after his uncle was assassinated. He could not attend the funeral, which was held in California, though his parents did. Stuart Milk recalled:

My mother and father contributed to Harvey’s campaigns, but I don’t know if they saw Harvey’s impact. What they took away from his funeral, which they brought back to me — they communicated to me – was that they just didn’t realize the impact that Harvey had made on so many people. I’m talking about the heartfelt acceptance that he gave to so many people. They were coming up to my parents left and right that whole week, just thanking them. That had a huge impact on both my parents. It gave them a broader understanding.

Stuart Milk now works for a national company that runs employment assistance centers in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island. He sees his work with youths, the elderly, dislocated workers and former prison inmates as part of his family’s legacy. (Being an openly gay relative of a gay political pioneer has inevitably led to comparisons, even then, Stuart Milk said. “I kind of shrunk back,” he said. “The political piece didn’t seem to fit me.”)

Audrey Milk and her son, Stuart, traveled to San Francisco last year, for the unveiling of a bust of Harvey Milk at the Treasure Island Job Corps Center, at the invitation of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and for a march and vigil commemorating the 30th anniversary of the assassinations of Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone.

Mrs. Mendales, the cousin, said she found the film deeply moving — though not everyone she has spoken with felt the same way. She recalled:

Other members of the family were aghast. I got a phone call from my husband’s cousin’s husband, who’s in Florida, and he said, ‘Did you see the picture “Milk”?’ This was just two weeks ago. I said I thought it was just wonderful. He said, ‘Well… I couldn’t stand seeing one man kiss another man.’ He didn’t get the point at all. I didn’t go any further but I said, ‘He was a wonderful person. He was for all people, not just gays.’ But I dropped it.

Even if the film does not get the best picture award, she said, “It will certainly go down in history and will always be a classic. This is what I’m hearing and this is what I feel. Because the essence of him certainly came through.”

Benjamin Milk, the former S.E.C. official, said he believed his cousin was “cut from the same cloth” as civil rights leaders like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He said of the film, “It is a powerful, powerful movie, and Sean Penn has got the mannerisms, and I even think the voice, of Harvey. I think it would be an injustice if he doesn’t get the award.”

And Audrey Milk, the sister-in-law, also praised Mr. Penn’s performance. She called the film “marvelous,” but added, quietly, “It did affect me. I couldn’t possibly see it more than one time.”

Sheldon, and anyone else who loved this movie: please do yourself a favor and run, don’t walk, to find a copy of the documentary The Times of Harvey Milk. It’s even more inspiring than the feature (though I loved Milk) and Harvey is even more inspirational and amazing in real life.

I am so glad to read that Harvey was a teacher, as he attended Albany State College, now The University of New York at Albany, when my husband and I were there at the end of WW2. I will never forget Harvey’s melting, kind eyes and his constant wonderful smile which Sean Penn captured so vividly.
I understood Audrey, Harvey’s sisiter in law when she said, she could not see the movie again. I was gripped by Penn’s portrayl of Harvey. I felt in a trance and knew I could not see the movie again.
i tried , but could not find an email address for Penn and Gus Van Sant to tell them this. I was so impressed when i saw them in an interview on TV awhile ago .
Harvey, a fraternity brother of Sy’s, visited us and our new baby in our apt on So, Lake Ave, in Albany. Years later we read about and kept up with his political activism in San Francisco, We were devastated when he was assassinated. Harvey was the Saint of Castro Street.
That saintly quality was there in Albany and in every newspaper story and in Penn. Perhaps the Oscar voters chose Penn knowing it was something there in Penn. Saintly is the something. And the smile.
Harriett F.

What a great and deeper insight into this incredible hero! And the courgae of the nephew at 17! We just found his speech with Speaker Pelosi on you tube and must say the apple does not fall far from the tree.
We are going to see MILK again – our son had struggled with his sexual orientation – this film can ease that burden and Harvey Milk lives on!
Terrific story!

All this praise from the gay community really sets me to thinking.
Just how did gays treat him when he was alive?
I’m sure from personal observation they were petty jealous and vindictive toward him because of any popularity that he acquired from others.
Far too many gays destroy each other because of insane uncontrolled jealousy that causes them to believe that if they as individuals can’t have or be something then they don’t want anyone else to have or be that, either.
And, of course they destroy themselves in the process.
The gay rights movement will stuggle along for years and years to come with out ever getting anywhere because no one member of the group will concede that someone else might be able to do somethings better then they them selves can, knowing fully well that they are incapable of doing it themslves.
Two things that I have experienced from the gay community is the fact that they’ll put some ugly looking no talent woman on a pedestal and worship her right into being a star, however they won’t give the time of day to a fellow homosexual who really has talent and can do something for their community.
Also, a gay stage director told me fifty years ago that homosexual men have all the bad qualities of women with none of a woman’s saving graces. And I have found this to be very very true.
What would gays do if Harvey Milk were alive today?
Why kill him all over again, of course!

Thibodeau – You express well the very ugly and dehumanizing stereotypes of gay men that were once so prevalent in our society. They don’t characterize me or the many wonderful, kind and thoughtful gay men I have known. Obviously, there’s no teaching an old dog new tricks in your case.

To #7 Perley J. Thibodeau
all I can suggest is that you get some seriously intense therapy – NOW! I have no way of knowing what kind of miserable experiences you have had in your life, but whatever they are I feel genuinely sorry that they have left you with such a twisted vision of the world around you. The gay community is no different than any other community and includes both wonderful and horrible people. Of course there are shallow, vain, mean homosexuals, but it’s not as if those traits don’t also exist among our heterosexual brothers and sisters. Perhaps your insistence on seeing only the negative has blinded you to the world of good, normal, everyday gay people just going about their own lives and minding their own business. Of course I’ve had bad experiences with individual gay people, but it would be just as wrong to judge all gay people by those individuals as it would be to judge all straight people by the even greater number of heterosexuals who have treated me badly.

jim, boston
I now have eight unproduced movie/stage scripts on the subject finished, with five more all blocked out with some dialogue.
They are all comedies that put the gay life in a good light, and in their own way would force viewers to be much more understanding of what gay people go through in trying to live their own lives.
I really don’t need therapy, dear; I need royalties!

The patriarchy killed Harvey Milk, and aided and abetted Dan White in getting away with murder. Unless or until we all band together to change the system which benefits only upper class straight white men, we are doomed, and subject to the violence and rape culture the patriarchy promotes.

I work with Helen ‘Milk’ Mendales . I am a nursing student and her aide. She is a wonderful human being and speaks fondly of her dear cousin Harvey. She is now 87 years old. She is smart, funny ,youthful and vibrant. We spoke today about her feature in NY times ( which she reads daily) and she is very excited and happy . Its wonderful that this happened. She can share memories of her cousin Harvey and some she shared with me and now to the readers of the NEW YORK TIMES.

With the fixation on youthfulness that is still rampart among members of the gay community at large, it was perhaps just as well that Harvey Milk did die young rather than become an “Old Queen,” as used even in gay put down parlance to this day.
Tennessee Williams was the one who brought this added conviction to the world’s stage and literary media when he wrote, “Sweet Bird of Youth,” and stated that “a young man’s youthful attractiveness is like that of a beautiful bird in the fact that it flies away at the age of thirty years, never to return.’
In liberating the subject of homosexuality and bringing it to the forefront of people’s awareness, he also did a disservice to the male gay community as, this struck a sinister cord in the minds of gays who even today are morbidly obsessed with not turning thirty, and so are still using that aforementioned derogatory title in order to lord their callow thinking youthful minds over their older, more worldly, and better financially established counterparts.
Completely ignoring, of course that a man’s, like that of a woman’s attractiveness only starts to show physically after the age of fifty when their youthfully mean spirited mental attitude is lost by the acquisition of more solid self assuredness.
A supposedly young man recently wrote to a Bangor Daily News blog thread bragging/complaining that older men kept coming onto him.
Naturally, not to miss a golden opportunity, this poster replied; “Wait until you’re their age and they’ll stop.”
Gays would be much better served were they to prepare for their “older years” as, if they’re lucky that is where they will very soon find themselves living in.

Very sad they left out he was a teacher. It’s from that desire to instruct Milk reached out to others.and forged a new path. There are so many who fear Gay teachers will convert their young but they have always been with us in every school and university. That just isn’t how human sexuality works!

I suffered through just the last half hour of the Academy Awards to see who the Best Actor and Best Picture were.
In his acceptance speech when he said an elegant man was elected president, was Sean Penn outing Obama?
An elegant man is how Germans have always described gay men

I don’t know any elegant men who think that Mr. Obama is among their ranks – from the white bow tie that made him look like Michelle’s prom date at the inaugural balls to the return of casual dress in the Oval Office, it’s clear that elegance is not one of his priorities.

Mrs. Obama, on the other hand, has so far only had that disastrous Narciso Rodriguez from election night – fire engine red and beaded to suggest the shape of mid-term pregnancy – to spoil her otherwise well-chosen and stylish appearance.

In a way, this is a gay-themed version of an old theme – Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. It is nice to see a reminder that ordinary non-millionaire, non-famous/dynastic citizens can and do get off their duffs, work for a cause, and make a difference – even if they flop a few times first. Most of us see politicians as packaged brand name products and not as actual people who have lives outside of work, have annoying habits or friends, wear clothes not sanctioned by some image consultant, etc.

Perley – you think that a large majority of straights AREN’T obsessed with youthfulness? Anxiety about looks is the American way – sells more makeup, clothes, gym memberships, baldness remedies, cosmetic surgery procedures (the first man I knew who had a cosmetic surgery procedure was a middle-aged man who got an eyelid lift and a sports car after a big promotion).

I lived in San Francisco in the 1970’s and remember Harvey Milk well. I’m sure there were gay people who disagreed with him and even disliked him, but for most of us he was ‘our guy’ and we were extremely proud of him. I remember him riding on a convertible in the 1978 Gay Freedom Day Parade, holding a sign saying ‘I’m From Woodmere New York’ as his way of saying that so many of us grew up in small towns all around the country, that we were your friends, neighbors, co-workers, and yes, your children. The last time I saw him alive was at the ‘No on Prop 6′ headquarters the night of the election. The party was in full swing when Harvey walked in. He was smiling and laughing as people hugged and congratulated him. It was less than a month later that he was killed. The only quibble I had with the movie was the suggestion that there was no immediate response to the news of Harvey and Mayor Moscone’s assassination. The response was immediate and heartfelt, as shops and restaurants in the Castro closed and people poured into the streets in a state of shock and grief.
Had he lived, I truly believe he would’ve gone on to greater things, like mayor, or state assemblyman. I also believe that in the void caused by his death, there was no national gay figure to step forward at the very beginning of the AIDS epidemic to lead the community in a call to action against the deadly silence of the Reagan administration. The film is a wonderful tribute to a very special person.

Milk, the movie was superb. The documentary Life and Times of Harvey Milk was even better…..starring the real Harvey Milk. Would love to see that come back to theatres. I think the public would appreciate that now.
Also would be great to hear more about the Andrew Milk Family, nephew of Harvey Milk. Andy, if you are out there…let’s hear from you with thoughts and photos. Thanks!!!

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